Andromeda Breakthrough Read online

  'But you know what this means, don't you?'

  He moved from the window and confronted Osborne.

  'We've lost our national capital, all of it. The computer's gone. The girl's gone. Even the original message which the Bouldershaw telescope picked up has gone. There's no chance of starting again. From being a first class power, with the know-how for unassailable defence plus all the potential for industrial supremacy we're now relegated to a second-rate power; third-rate in fact.'

  Osborne turned his gaze from the desk and looked mildly at his inquisitor. His silence infuriated the Minister still more .

  'Once in a million years,' he pointed out, 'or probably longer, a planet gets a Christmas present from another planet. And what does some dam' fool do? They go and burn it.'

  Once again he crossed to the window and looked down on the traffic in Whitehall.

  'Were they fools?'

  Osborne's comment was not more than a murmured question.

  'We'll be back on American aid by the end of the year,'

  the Minister retorted.

  'At least America's a boss you can understand,' Osborne suggested. 'This Andromeda information we had to take on its face value. The results seemed splendid. But who understood what it was all about? From somewhere in that dying and half-dead spiral nebula of Andromeda comes a briefing that makes no sense to anyone but a computer - and a freak girl; and maybe one honest-to-God human scientist.'

  'You mean Fleming,' the Minister said.

  Osborne ignored him. 'Given that an intelligence in some recess of space sends us a stream of technical data which enables us obediently to make an anthropomorphic creature to run its machine, who's honestly going to believe that the whole business is for our benefit and not theirs?'

  The Minister lighted a cigarette. He could not help but be a little impressed with the argument. 'Is that what Fleming thought?' he asked.

  'That it was an attempted take-over? Yes. I'm not saying he did blow the computer to pieces, but if he did I for one don't blame him. I thank God it didn't fall into anyone else's hands.'

  The Minister was a simple-minded man. He disliked arguments about ethics. People were better off when they only did what they were told. 'My country right or wrong, my mother drunk or sober' was a motto he had heard when he was a boy. He thought it rather good.

  'Whose side are you on, Osborne?'

  Osborne gave him a bland smile. 'The losing one, usually, Minister.'

  His chief snorted in disgust. 'I had hoped you would have had something useful to contribute. I was wrong. Perhaps Geers has bestirred himself enough to discover what the hell's been going on at the place he's supposed to be the director of.'

  The Minister switched on his intercom and told a secretary to get Thorness on the line. Osborne took it as a gesture of dismissal. He walked slowly from the office. He was privately rather surprised that he was still a free man. Never before in his precisely-planned and sedate career as a civil servant had he allowed his feelings to colour his sense of duty. Yet, in view of what had happened, he felt no regret whatever. He had, in fact, helped Fleming, and he was only concerned that no one should be able to prove it.

  As he returned down the corridor to his own office he permitted himself a smile of amusement at a mental picture of Geers on this morning of crisis.

  Geers was a careerist. As Director of Thorness he was the fair-haired glory boy of the Ministries of Defence and Science. He had adroitly swung over to enthusiasm for the Dawnay Experiment after several days of obstinate obstruction in favour of rocketry. Geers was a man who knew which side his bread was buttered. He had virtually achieved the pleasurable miracle of having it buttered on both sides.

  But away up in Scotland Geers was now presenting the picture of a victimised and harassed autocrat. Despite the frantic messages to his quarters during the night he had dressed as slowly and as carefully as usual, his shirt collar uncomfortably stiff and his tie pulled tight into a small neat knot. But the impression of dignified pomposity which he considered essential for a key man in the nation's scientific technocracy was marred by the hunted look in his tired eyes behind their glasses, the black sheen of an inadequate shave, and the nervous tautness of his mouth.

  He sat at his vast stainless steel desk, bereft of papers, but festooned with telephones, and glared at the visitors he had summoned - Fleming and Dawnay.

  Madeleine Dawnay sat in the one easy chair near the window.

  Her rather mannish face was parchment yellow and her eyes were dull with fatigue and illness. She had pulled her dressing gown tightly round her emaciated body, missing the even warmth of the sick bay. Gratefully she sipped from a cup of coffee Geers' secretary had brought her.

  Her eyes moved thoughtfully from Geers to Fleming, who lolled against the office partition. She said nothing, despite the glance of appeal Geers made to her.

  'I've got the whole of Whitehall round my neck,' Geers said plaintively. 'The Minister of Defence is on the blower every five minutes, and half the senior staff at Science are badgering me, and I don't even know what happened.'

  Dawnay put her coffee carefully on the window sill. The slight physical action seemed an effort. 'I don't know what's happened either,' she said quietly.

  'Osborne arrived at the station just after ten. With someone else. The public relations girl took them to the computer room. God knows why, but then I'm only the Director here.

  Afterwards, when Osborne and his guest had booked out, the duty operator locked up for the night.'

  'And Osborne went back to London?' Fleming looked better now; he had had a shave and a bath, and his usual casual slacks and wool shirt and sweater were at least moderately clean. He seemed now more despondent than tired, but there were strain marks around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

  'Yes,' said Geers. 'No one else went in to the computer block after that, except the girl, Andromeda. After she'd been there some time the guard corporal thought he smelt burning. He went into the main control room and found the place a perfect shambles and full of smoke.'

  'And where was Andre?' Dawnay asked.

  'Got out through the emergency exit, according to the corporal. Anyway, she or someone dropped a glove. A man's glove.'

  He turned and looked at Fleming, suddenly displaying a leather gauntlet taken from the desk drawer. 'Yours?'

  Fleming did not trouble to look.

  'So you know it all,' Geers said. 'Only two people know, you and the girl. The girl's dead.'

  Fleming nodded. With maddening slowness he repeated: 'The girl's dead. So that's that.'

  'Not quite,' said Geers angrily. 'You have some questions to answer. You're the only person, Fleming, who wanted the computer destroyed. You always have. I can tell you that your security file is full of instances when you've shot off your mouth about it. In that I'm glad to say you're unique.

  Others have a better sense of loyalty, more vision.'

  Dawnay protested. 'I think some of us were beginning to have doubts.'

  Geers turned and stared at her unbelievingly. He was about to speak when the intercom buzzed.

  'Major Quadring is here, sir,' came his secretary's voice.

  'He has the Marine Commando report on the island search.'

  'Right,' Geers told her. 'I'll see him in his office.'

  He rose and crossed to the door. 'You're to stay here, Fleming,' he ordered. Less brusquely he told Dawnay that he would try not to keep her much longer.

  When the door closed Fleming moved across the office and stood close to Dawnay, looking out of the window.

  'He's no business to drag you into all this,' he said. 'You're not well enough yet.'

  She laughed shortly. 'I'm all right. I'm a tough old bird. I must be, or I wouldn't be here. Bu tell me, John, what really happened? You did it, didn't you?'

  He kept on looking out of the window. 'You don't want to be saddled with this.'

  'I don't,' she agreed, 'but as I'm involved whether I like it
or not I'll just say that you can trust me if you want to trust anyone. Osborne must have smuggled you in. Then you and the girl destroyed it.'

  'The girl's dead.'

  There was a break in his voice which surprised her. In her experience John Fleming easily got emotional about principles, ideals, wrongs. But seldom about people.

  'Anyway,' she said quietly. 'There's no one, no one, to give evidence against you.'

  Before he could answer Geers returned. He was grim but pleased with himself. Major Quadring had brought useful information.

  Deliberately he took time to seat himself at his desk before he spoke.

  'Right, Fleming; right,' he barked.

  'Right what?' enquired Fleming lazily.

  'What happened when you got to the island?'

  Fleming ambled around the desk. 'Why ask me when obviously the snoops have told you? But I'll confirm what they have undoubtedly said. We got into the caves and I lost her. They're big caves. We had no torch. She blundered into a dead-end with a deep pool. That was it. Poor bloody kid.'

  Dawnay noted the break in his voice again. 'I thought you held Andre wasn't human,' she observed.

  'Human enough to drown.'

  'Are you sure she fell in?' Geers asked suspiciously.

  'Of course I'm sure,' Fleming snapped. 'Quadring told you that they'd found the bandages off her hands, didn't he? Or was that one bit of his smug little report he forgot to give? Or were those jolly Marines so dumb they didn't think them worth picking up ?'

  Geers studied Fleming in silence, taking his time so that he could be certain of noting any reaction. 'I have news for you, Fleming, if it is news in your case. They've both dived and dragged the pool. There's no body.'

  There was no doubt about Fleming's surprise. 'She must be in there,' he shouted. 'I traced her into that part of the caves. They've not dragged properly. There's no other way out. I searched thoroughly.'

  'So Quadring says,' Geers murmured. His briskness had gone. He had hoped to bluster a confession from Fleming.

  But Fleming was obviously dumbfounded.

  'She can't get off the island, and as it's been under constant survey since daylight that mean's she's somewhere in the caves. I'm going to look for myself. It's the only way to get things done in this damned situation.'

  'I'll take you,' said Fleming firmly.

  'No, that won't do,' Geers retorted. 'You're under arrest.'

  'Only on your instructions.'

  'Let him,' Dawnay interrupted. 'He knows the place. He wants to find Andre far more even than you.'

  With bad grace Geers agreed and the two men went off to get into warm clothes and seaboots.

  Fleming was authorised to draw torches and a high-pressure lamp, and to fuel an outboard motor boat. Within half an hour they were crossing the two miles of angry water to the island. Neither said a word on the trip. Geers sat hunched in the middle of the boat staring at the silhouette of the rocky islet rising out of the mist. Fleming sat at the stem holding the tiller.

  He beached the boat on the shingle right opposite the mouth of the cave.

  Geers waded through the surf while Fleming heaved the boat clear of deep water. They clambered through the steep shingle at high tide mark and moved to the mouth of the cave. Gulls wheeled and called at this invasion of their private kingdom, but the silence inside the cavern made a weird contrast to the screaming birds and the rhythmic hiss of the breaking waves.

  'Sure this is the way you came?' Geers asked, moving cautiously forward in the wavering light of the lamp and Fleming's torch.

  'Sure,' grunted Fleming. 'You automatically memorise this sort of thing just to make sure you don't forget the way out.'

  He directed his beam of torchlight along a narrow sloping.

  passage which curved to the right. 'There's the way to the chamber with the pool. You can see the Commando's footsteps in the sand.'

  Geers began to move forward, shining the lamp on the disturbed sand. He stopped abruptly when he sensed that Fleming was not following. 'Where are you going?' he called.

  Fleming was moving to the left. 'I'm taking a look down this passage. There's another pool in here too.'

  'You think they dragged the wrong one?' Geers asked.

  'No. Even Quadring and that Marine Officer aren't that stupid.'

  Geers turned back. 'I don't know what your idea is, but I'm coming to see. We'll look at the other pool afterwards.'

  The passage dropped steeply, and the aperture became smaller. Fleming crouched low and moved steadily ahead.

  Geers, trying to keep up with him, caught his boot on a boulder and fell headlong. He grunted with pain as a jagged rock caught his shoulder.

  Fleming turned and shone his torch on him. 'Hurt yourself? It's tricky if you haven't done much caving. Wait here while I take a look at the pool. I won't be long.'

  Geers got up awkwardly and took a few steps back to the wider part of the passage. Fleming's footsteps echoed softly but clearly along the cave walls, getting fainter and fainter.

  For a full minute there was the cold, dead silence of a lifeless world. Then, to his right in the direction of the main cavern, came the hard, clear sound of a stone moving across the rock face. It dropped with a dull plop into water. Geers froze into immobility, instinctively holding his breath.

  Another stone fell into the water, and then the rasp of several pebbles.

  Geers' reaction was a mixture of excitement and fear. The fear won. He dared not move by himself. He yelled for Fleming.

  His voice was a falsetto, and the urgency brought Fleming back as fast as he could clamber up the slope.

  'Hi' he said. 'What's up?'

  'Didn't you hear anything? Find anything?' Geers demanded.

  'It's a deep pool, like the other. I think it's just behind the rock face of the main cavern. When you get deep pools like these in cave holes they are sometimes connected at the base - like a U-tube. What goes in one may come out of the other.'

  'But nothing has?'

  Fleming shook his head.

  'No, but a body could be caught at the bottom. They'd better drag the second pool as well.'

  Geers shivered, though it was not as cold in the cave as outside. 'Not a nice death, even for a creature,' he muttered. More loudly he asked, 'Did you throw stones into the pool.

  Fleming shone his torch on the other's face. 'No,' he answered. 'Why do you ask?'

  At that moment there again came the faint noise of moving pebbles. In the echoing and re-echoing of the tiniest sound it was almost impossible to identify the direction of the noise.

  'There it is again. The noise. Stones moving,' whispered Geers.

  'Dislodged by me, and still not settled. It always happens.'

  Geers wasn't satisfied. He moved a step or so along the right hand passage, the light from his lamp swinging along the sides of the pool cavern. The rocks were wet and grey, with here and there pyrites glistening as the light caught them.

  Fleming also switched on his torch and the beam reached right across the pool where the rock face curved gently into a rounded surface at the edge of the water. In a recess the light caught and held a blob of white.

  'What is it?' whispered Geers, clutching at his companion's arm.

  Fleming shook off Geers' hand and moved forward. The torch beam probed into the crevice.

  'What is it?' Geers repeated urgently.

  'Her, of course. Give me a hand to get her out.'

  Fleming eased forward, cautiously seeking a foothold on the slimy rock. Geers did not follow.

  'At least play the light so I can see,' Fleming shouted angrily.

  When he reached Andre he thought she was dead. Her dress was saturated and clinging to her body. She felt stone cold as Fleming put his hands under the waist and shoulders to half-lift half-drag her back.

  Difficult as the job was, he realised how little she weighed, how fragile this man-made femina sapiens was.

  Gently he laid her on the dry sand at Geer
s' feet, leaning against the rock face while he gasped for air. Geers stood transfixed.

  'Is she - ?' he whispered, placing the lamp on the ground so it illuminated the girl's face. She looked like the death-figure of a young goddess, slim and fair and palely beautiful.

  Fleming squatted down and pulled up an eyelid. The blue iris seemed sightless. There was no visible contraction as the light caught it. He groped on the ice-cold wrist for the sign of pulsation. There was a tremor of movement. He could not be sure whether it was in his own fingers or proof that Andre still lived.

  'I'm not a doctor, so I can't be sure. But I think there's a flicker. She once said she had a better constructed heart than humans.'

  Fleming once more put his hands under her shoulders and pulled her to a sitting position. When the upper part of her body was upright her head fell forward. And she moaned.

  'She is alive,' shouted Geers exultantly.

  'Just.' With his free hand Fleming fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a flask.

  'Try a drop of the hard stuff, duckie,' he said. With his teeth he unscrewed the cap.

  'You shouldn't force her to drink alcohol. It's a fallacy that - '

  'To hell with your boy scouts' first aid rules! Here, my sweet,' he murmured to the girl, 'it's the real McCoy.'

  He let a few drops of whisky seep through Andre's pale, clenched lips.

  Not daring to move, both men waited for the reaction. It came gradually. The lips relaxed and parted a little. The tongue tip emerged and moved across them.

  Fleming gently brushed the matted blonde hair from her face. He was rewarded by a momentary flickering of the eyelids.

  'That's it,' he murmured close to her ear. 'Now try to swallow a mouthful.' He forced the mouth of the flask between her lips and against her teeth, tipping in a spoonful of spirit.

  Andre gulped, spluttered, and then swallowed it. Fleming could feel her body relaxing against his encircling arm.

  'How did she get here?' Geers demanded.

  'There must be a siphon between the two pools. She'd sink on one side and come up on the other. God knows how she managed to hang on the side and pull herself up. Not with those injuries.'